I didn't actually get around to writing up the post until June, but I actually bought the car, a 2022 Kia Niro EV, in early March 2022. My write-up included my experience taking a road trip from my home in a suburb north of Detroit, Michigan to Washington, DC and back.
Well, it's 16 months later, I've driven over 10,000 miles in the new car, and I just got back from another road trip to DC & back.
As I noted in my last update from March of this year, the EV industry and market have both gone through some tumultuous changes since I first bought my car, including (but not limited to):
I didn't actually get around to writing up the post until June, but I actually bought the car, a 2022 Kia Niro EV, in early March...March 5, 2022 to be precise, almost exactly one year ago.
With a year of real world driving (including an 1,100 mile (round trip) road trip from Metro Detroit to the District of Columbia) baked in, I figured this would be a good time to post an update on how things are going for those who've never owned an EV and are wondering about the good, the bad & the ugly of the experience.
Before I get started, I should take a moment to note that the EV industry and market have both gone through some tumultuous changes over the past 12 months, including (but not limited to):
Regular readers may have noticed that I barely posted anything on the site last week, with good reason: I was out of town. I drove out to DC for a few days, ostensibly to attend the annual National Institute of Health Care Media (NIHCM) Awards Dinner, where I was a finalist in the Digital Media category this year.
(I didn't win, but that's OK...the competition was extremely impressive and it really was an honor just to be nominated, really!)
This was the fifth time I've visited the nation's capital, but the first time that I've driven. It's also the first road trip I've taken in an electric car, a brand-new 2022 Kia Niro EV (it replaced my 17-year-old Hyundai which was so badly rusted underneath that my mechanic was surprised it survived the past winter).
I don't often post blog entries about non-healthcare related issues, but I've had a lot of folks express curiosity about what it's like owning/driving an EV in the real world, so I figured this trip (which was, after all, for a healthcare awards dinner, and I also had healthcare policy meetings with a couple of folks on Capitol Hill) would be a good case study to give some thoughts on the subject.
